Broadcom said that products using the next-generation IEEE 802.11ac wireless technology would ship near the end of 2012, providing a roadmap to wireless technology above 1 Gbit/s.

Broadcom offered a sneak peek of some of the technologies the company is working on a "Brainstorm" event in San Francisco on Thursday. Although the meeting was pitched as a preview of January's Consumer Electronics Show in las Vegas, Broadcom executives declined to reveal any announcements in advance of the show.

However, they did choose to highlight three areas: the 802.11ac technology, application processors that will distribute video around the home, and Ethernet for the car.

802.11ac

Broadcom is one of the companies working on the 802.11ac technology, whose standardization and ratification will be administered by the Wi-Fi Alliance. Wi-Fi Alliance officials have said previously that the 802.11ac standard should be ratified in about the middle of 2012. Rahul Patel, vice president of the LAN connectivity business for Broadcom, described 802.11ac as complementary to the WiGig Alliance, which has already ratified its standard and is waiting on companies to develop products based on its new version 1.1 technology.

What's clear is that, in the home, video will continue to dominate the majority of bits being passed throughout the home. Cisco's VNI index already shows that half of the content transmitted throughout the home today is video; by 2015, that percentage will increase to 91 percent.

To Broadcom, 802.11ac is the answer. As it's a 5-GHz technology, it communicates in "clean air" unencumbered by interference from microwaves and the far more prevalent devices in the 2.4-GHz band, Patel said.

From a technical perspective, a typical 3x3 array of 802.11ac antennas using an 80-MHz channel should, within an interference-free room, transmit over 1 Gbits/s. That's about three times the throughout of 802.11n, which can transmit about 300 Mbits/s under the same conditions. Using 160-MHz channels, Patel said, the throughput could push 1.2 Gbits/s or slightly higher.

It's unclear whether Broadcom or other manufacturers can or will bring products to market in advance of the formal ratification, as they did with 802.11n. As part of the certification process, the wi-Fi alliance organizes "plug-fests" that allow manufacturers to test their products for interoperability.

Application processors for home streaming

Verizon, as well as other ISPs, have indicated that they see a future in which content enters the home via their network and then is distributed throughout the home and beyond. Chips like the 7425A1 application processor could reside within the router or even the home gateway, processing and then transcoding the video to be passed on to other devices, like tablets.

In a demonstration, Broadcom executives showed off the chip processing eight HD video channels simultaneously. The 7425A1 also includes an OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics processor, allowing the video to be treated like a object and moved around the screen.

The 7425A1 is already in production and is deployed; Stephen Palm, a senior technical director at Broadcom, hinted that more announcements could be in store at CES.

Ethernet for the car

With automakers like Audi making the technology behind their luxury cars as much a selling point as their drivetrains, it makes sense that the connected car will be the evolution of the platform.

The problem? "The pace of consumer electronics is going so fast that by the time a carmaker brings a particular technology to market, it's no longer current," said Kevin Brown, the vice president and general manager of infrastructure and networking for Broadcom.

Broadcom then, has decided on a technology that never seems to go out of style: Ethernet.

Last month, BMW, Land Rover, and Hyundai joined the OPEN (One Pair Ether-Net) group, which has designed a simple twisted-pair Ethernet cable that can be run throughout the car. The idea is that newer, user-owned devices could tap into the Ethernet infrastructure. (Why not wireless? Because every wireless component is eventually going to need a power wire, and power can be delivered over Ethernet, Brown said.)

About the Author

Mark Hachman Mark joined ExtremeTech in 2001 as the news editor, after rival CMP/United Media decided at the time that online news did not make sense in the new millennium.
Mark stumbled into his career after discovering that writing the great American novel did not pay a monthly salary, and that his other possible career choice, physics, require... See Full Bio

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